10 comments:

The following is a comment at the LA Times website. I think I agree 100% with his (her) analysis and conclusions:

"P McKann at 5:46 PM February 27, 2013

The Apex of narcissism is almost here. I've seen the actual demos of this product, as opposed to the cool psuedo-demo from last year, this product is more a Social Media portal. "Ok, Glass, take a picture;" "Ok, Glass, film me doing this thing." In other words, "look at me, daddy! Daddy look at me!"

Sadly, "Daddy" is actually "Big Brother," And strapping on one of the devices is doing the government's work by actually spying on yourself."

So looking directly at someone while talking to someone else through these AR glasses is less weird?

I hate those bluetooth earpieces. I was in a store the other day and there was this guy who was talking very loudly to (apparently) nobody. I thought he was a lunatic talking to the voices in his head, until I noticed the earpiece.

The emasculating nature of the smartphone is only a single instance of the emasculating nature of information age jobs. There is an attempt at masculinity 2.0 that TED is very much a part of. Macho 2.0 has existed for decades in pure information disciplines such as math and theoretical physics. There's lot of "my theorem is tougher than your theorem" that goes on internally. The information age has put a lot of people in the social position of mathematician (despite the fact that their most technical skill is the use of Google.)

I don't think Macho 2.0 will ever replace Macho 1.0. Hollywood can try to make working at laptops cool with all of the science geek detective dramas, but don't we all expect Mike Hammer to slap the geeks around and say, "get your head out of the screen Poindexter!"